


Drowned and Glimmering Colour

by pearl_o



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Frottage, Late at Night, M/M, Size Kink, Somnophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-09 06:13:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearl_o/pseuds/pearl_o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seeing Charles sleeping like this, it's easy to forget how much power he holds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drowned and Glimmering Colour

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Drowned and Glimmering Colour](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3969892) by [Deiko (Gellert)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gellert/pseuds/Deiko)



> Written for kink_bingo square _sleepy/unconscious_. Thanks to pocky_slash for looking it over.

Erik wakes in the middle of the night with a full bladder. It's black in the room, but his internal clock estimate it's between two and three am. It takes a few moments to extract himself from the bedsheets and Charles's embrace; he's sweaty, damp in all the places Charles's skin was touching his. He makes his way to the bathroom, drawing a map in his mind of all the items in the room, silently avoiding the obstacles in the dark.

He takes a long piss, washes his hands and wipes them off on the clotch hanging next to the sink, and heads back to the bed. 

Erik's been gone perhaps two minutes. It's long enough for Charles to have moved in his sleep, adjusting his position to a more comfortble one. He's taking up half of the space Erik only just occupied, curled up on his side in the empty warmth he left behind.

Charles doesn't wake when Erik climbs back into the bed, not even when Erik has to bodily shift him across the mattress to make room. Charles sleeps deeply and wholeheartedly. There's a level of trust in it Erik still can't quite wrap his head around. It's not as though Charles has never had monsters of his own to fear.

Erik himself has always been a light sleeper. He's slept in ditches by the side of the road, empty horse stalls in untended barns, luxury beds in the finest European hotels. No one's ever caught him off his guard in any of them.

Charles is a dead weight, limp in his slumber, and yet when Erik lifts him what strikes him most is how unexpectedly _light_ Charles feels. It isn't that Charles is slight - he's a solid enough man - but more that Erik somehow thinks of him as being larger than he is. It's not as though he isn't _aware_ that Charles is smaller than Erik himself, but it's easy to forget in Charles's waking presence. The way he carries himself, his strength and will, his intellect, the awesome scope of his abilities... It's all too much power to see past.

And yet here, asleep beside Erik in this bed, Erik can see through it. Charles is muscled, yes, fit enough for the life he leads - but then, the life he leads is nothing like the life Erik has had to train his own body for. He's short; curled up like this he takes up so little space, but even if he were stretched out fully, Erik would tower over him by inches. 

If Charles were just a man Erik passed in the street one day, it would never occur to him to process Charles as a threat. Physically, he could never close to being a match for Erik, and so Erik's eyes would have passed right by him, seeking out the figures in the crowd who were more likely to pose a danger. 

(Would he have stopped to notice anything else about Charles, then? No. Erik knows Charles is an objectively attractive man - he's seen the way people smile at him, flirt with him so easily and naturally - and he knows, too, that Charles's eyes and mouth and freckles have somehow wormed their way into Erik's own mind, rewritten themselves as the definition of what is desirable and beautiful. But that part of Erik was switched off for so long, he would have walked by Charles and never given him a second thought.)

Erik's eyes have adjusted enough to the dark to make out more than just the vague mass of Charles's form. He reaches out his hand, lets it slip under the neck of Charles's pajama top, presses his hand to the warm skin of Charles's collarbone. The bones feel almost delicate beneath his still fingers.

Erik draws in a slow breath and rises to his knees. Charles is lying on his side; Erik pushes him, very gently, to his stomach, and Charles goes without resistance. Erik lifts his leg over Charles's body, holding himself up as he straddles Charles hips.

He looks down upon Charles, as though staring out an airplane window to the landscape below. Charles's dark hair is messy, tangled in curls, and Erik can see his profile where he's turned his head to the side, cheek against the pillow.

Erik takes hold of the hem of Charles's top, scrunching it up in his fingers, pushing the fabric slowly up his back. Charles's skin is pale, contrast like a glow in the dark like this. Erik's eyes are fixed on the sight, every new patch of flesh that comes available. When he's rucked the shirt up almost to Charles's armpits, he lets go.

After a moment, Erik leans over and mouths a wet kiss against Charles's spine, just at the edge of where it begins to disappear again beneath his top. He stretches himself out then, letting his body cover Charles's completely, pressing Charles down into the mattress. Charles starts to stir beneath him, then, at last.

_Erik?_ Charles sends mentally as a small questioning noise comes from his mouth. He's still more asleep than awake, but growing more aware, more curious.

"Shhhh," Erik says, kissing the nape of Charles's neck. The action causes Charles to sigh; he murmurs something brief into the pillow that Erik can't quite understand, before Erik feels his body relax once more.

Erik is aware that what he feels is an illusion. He knows that perfectly well. But the feeling of Charles beneath him, sleepy and small, barely conscious... It feels as though Charles is helpless. As though he's at Erik's mercy. All the things that make Charles so strong and powerful, all the things that make him Erik's equal and more: they're all easy to push aside like this.

It feels as though Erik could do whatever he liked, and Charles would be unable to stop him. Erik doesn't know why that arouses him, but it does.

(Charles isn't helpless, Erik reminds himself. Charles could never be helpless. Even now, even like this, Charles has his own defenses, just as deadly and effective as any of Erik's own.)

Erik lifts himself off Charles just long enough to tug down his own pants before he lies down again. He braces himself, arms on either side of Charles's shoulders, as he rubs himself off against the small of Charles's back. His nose is in Charles's hair; it smells sweet and clean, and it itches his nose a bit every time he inhales. He can hear Charles's breaths, almost as harsh and ragged as the ones Erik is letting out, but Charles's body stays slack and boneless, just as if he were still completely asleep. He's been listening in, Erik thinks, he has to be, he's figured out what Erik wants and why, and he's letting him have it anyway-

He comes, spilling himself against the soft, warm skin of Charles's back with a sense of relief and gratitude. He rolls off of Charles and onto his back, throwing his arm up over his eyes as he listens to his slowing gasps.

"Erik," Charles says, and Erik feels Charles's hand come to a rest, gentle in the middle of Erik's chest. 

"Charles," Erik says quietly.

_KIss me_? Charles thinks, and Erik wants to smile. Is it still a request when the asker takes for granted that it will be fulfilled? Or does it then become an order? A command? Charles's mind is everywhere, vast as the universe, intertwined with Erik's own like two snakes. Strength, Erik thinks. Control. Danger. They all mean something else when it comes to Charles. And so Erik is unprepared for this, for him. For once, he's caught off his guard.

"The middle of the night makes you rather philosophical, my friend," Charles says, but Erik does kiss him, then, and neither of them say another word.


End file.
